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The phrase "coming home" does, among most, invoke feelings of positivity. An image of open arms, a breath of relief passing through that familiar threshold, a weight being lifted from your shoulders. A sensation of warmth.
Riku finds that only the last of that list applies to him. And it is, perhaps, less to do with any happiness that may still linger in his heart and more with the fact that he is wearing a black leather coat in the middle of a tropical archipelago. His hair is already slick with sweat against his neck and his hands, trapped in their gloves, feel as though he'd run them through the surf lapping at his feet.
Despite this, Riku makes no move to shed them. He doesn't want to. He is not in the business of exposing himself moreso than necessary when the people here are bound to recognize him.
The day is still very young. Riku cannot see the light of the sun just barely stretching over the ocean for the blindfold over his eyes, but the feeling of the island's early morning air has long been ingrained in him. Really, he should not be here at all. The main island is not where his obligation lies. But Riku admits, however reluctantly, that he feels some kind of pull to check on this world after his… departure. And so, in the absence of anything else to do but wait, Riku wanders.
He drifts away from the beach, tracing the edges of homesteads and hillsides, their shadows all long enough to house him comfortably with the morning still only half-broken out of its sleep. Navigating the world this way had been a shock to Riku, at first. In order to chain his darkness he had given up light — vision, that is. The most fundamental sense for humans. But he adapted quickly. Darkness resides in everything, and the longer he resided in it himself the easier it was to feel out its corners and edges, to correlate them with the shapes of trees or houses or people.
It scares him a little, just how easy it was. What would he think? Riku wonders it often. Not long ago, Riku walked those roads he now avoids, a backpack slung over his shoulders and his two friends by his side, bickering over something inconsequential. Kairi's face is clear enough, though she's likely older by now… but the memory of his face bleeds like a bad watercolor. Riku clings to what details still have clarity: the most unruly hair on the island. Riku could never forget that. Not that smile, either — a glowing crescent moon that shines through a thick wreath of clouds, wherein the rest of him remains obscured in their shroud.
Hugging backyards and the shielding canopies of low-slung trees, Riku makes his was towards his house, the route of which he feels wholly confident he could never forget. This memory was not just housed in his mind, but in his body.
Riku stops when he senses its mass in front of him. There was not much he could decipher from it. Very little darkness had settled into its structure, just enough to distinguish its outline from the earth and sky behind it. It was a place of great happiness… of course it would try to make itself invisible to him.
Those happy days are gone now, Riku realizes. It seems obvious, but the gravity of it suddenly descends on him with all the weight of a falling star. For so long, he'd been exhausted of the same routine day after day. He had walked home from school with him and Kairi a thousand times before, and all he saw stretching out in front of him was it happening a thousand times more. Lost in that future, he had torn himself away from it by force, breaking it apart in his struggle. He'd doomed these islands, and it was only thanks to him they had healed. But they had healed without Riku there. That hole he'd left behind was gone. There was no place for him to fit in anymore.
Yes, Riku had come home. At least in the sense of returning to the place of his birth and upbringing. But he returned as an intruder. A specter, dark as the shadows he wandered, that blurred an otherwise happy scene. Just like in so many of those ghost stories he would show Riku as a child.
Even as Riku stands there in the shadow of his family's house, he feels that memory grow blurry. Like it, too, was an aging photograph, worn thin by the march of time and destined for obscurity.
Riku turns his back on that house and slinks away. His own residence isn't far. It's how they'd become friends in the first place, or so their parents say. He was so young, Riku doesn't remember. As far as Riku's concerned, he was always in his life. Maybe it's not so surprising, then, that he feels a certain lack of sentimentality towards the islands that had been the limits of his world until not so long ago. It was not some lingering frustration over what he believed to be a boring and mundane life. It was that half of every memory Riku made had him in it. Now that he had been cut away…
How much of Riku's own life had he forgotten as a result?
Just as that thought reaches him does Riku stop in the shadow of his own house. Focus, he thinks to himself. Do you remember what it looks like?
His family was appreciably wealthy, with enough money to purchase and maintain a house large enough to fit his parents, himself, and whatever permutation of grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins had decided to occupy the place for the week. Yes, it's a large house, but Riku can sense that well enough just standing before it. What else? What color were the shingles on the roof that he and Riku would sneak up to watch stars from? To which window would he push a ladder against to sleep over with Riku on restless nights?
A sudden clattering rips him from his thoughts. A spear of panic sends his pulse fluttering — that's the sound of the backdoor opening. In a frantic rush Riku dips behind the line of trees at the edge of the property, his coat flashing behind him. Heart hammering against his ribcage, Riku makes himself as small as possible against the base of its trunk.
He hears footsteps, soft against the grass. Without the use of his traditional sight, Riku's hearing had become far more adept. They stop in the middle of the yard.
"Hello?" A voice calls. "Is someone there?"
Riku's heart twists fiercely. That's his mother's voice… how long has it been since he heard her speak? He doesn't recall the last thing she said to him, nor the last thing he said to her. Then he'd vanished the night of the storm and never returned. God, do they all think he's dead? He hadn't even thought about it, he'd been so caught up in the mess his life had become.
He thinks, fleetingly, of revealing himself to her. But… no. If she believed him lost then showing her he was alive only to depart again would just break her more.
Riku covers his mouth with a hand. On top of everything else, he's a terrible son.
After a few more moments pass, she shuffles back towards the house. He hears the sound of water flowing. She must be watering the garden, like she does every morning. They'd been growing sweet peas, last he left.
It's not long until she finishes. Riku listens to her walk back to the door and open it. He does not hear it shut.
Hesitant, but with the most painful edge of hope, she calls:
"Riku?"
Riku shuts his eyes tight beneath his blindfold. After a pause, he hears her sigh and mumble something indistinct. The door clatters shut.
Immediately, Riku holds out his hand and summons a corridor, all but falling through it. He emerges once more on the shore of the beach he'd come from, panting like he'd run a marathon. The wet sand shifts beneath his boots. The breeze is hot and cloying.
He feels disgusting, like ants are crawling up and down his limbs. Riku should have known that attempting to return to this place would only result in disaster. He should have just gone to the play island in the first place. He'd learned a great deal of patience in these past months. He would have been fine sequestering himself there until it was time, away from prying eyes and yet more people he has wronged.
Had they mourned him? Clearly, his mother still held out some hope. There were tales of lost sailors returning after longer times than he. But they were just that. Tales. It was not far from a year, now. A long time for a child to survive on his own.
But he is alive. Somehow, despite what he probably deserves, he is alive.
"I'm telling you, I saw him! Right by the edge of the water!"
Once more, Riku seizes. That voice was Selphie's. It was deeper, more mature. A little less like a girl's and a little more like a woman's.
"Are you sure? But no one's seen him in months!"
And that was Tidus. He was straddling that line of maturity as well. Riku can hear a third set of footsteps with them. Wakka must be accompanying them too.
"I'm serious! He was all dressed in black and his hair was super long! Like a banshee's!" Selphie again. Her voice had a conspiratorial lilt.
"Well, he never did come back…" Tidus adds, thoughtful and a little somber. "Maybe it really is his ghost?"
Just leave me alone! Move, dammit!
Riku can almost hear Ansem's laughter as he takes a wavering step. Can almost feel his breath against his ear. "You're slipping…"
Perhaps sensing his distress, he feels Ansem's Guardian stir from its slumber. An image of the three kids being strangled in its grasp, staring up at its twisted, snarling grimace rises unbidden in his mind.
No. Don't hurt them!
Desperate to escape, Riku once more reaches out his hand. Darkness wicks between his fingers as he struggles to draw his focus enough to summon a corridor.
"Don't be silly, you two," Wakka pipes up. "Ghosts aren't… real…?"
Wakka's voice tilting upwards an octave tells Riku all he needs to know. The sound of footsteps had ceased as well.
Riku lets his hand fall back to his side and turns to face the trio. He cannot sense them with enough detail to know their expressions, but he thinks he can guess pretty well. Shock, confusion. Maybe fear as well. Riku knows he is a far different person than the boy who was lost in the storm that fateful night. He hardly recognizes himself either.
"R-Riku?" Selphie stutters. "Is that really you?"
A breeze kicks off the ocean and ducks beneath his coat, flaring it like the beat of a crow's wing. Riku finds that, though his heart has suddenly stilled into an unnatural calm, he has no words to say. He stares at them through the black of his blindfold, watching as they shift uncomfortably.
Reckless as always, Tidus takes the first step towards him. Then another, then another, until he comes to a stop some ten or so feet away. The wind is picking up again, throwing Riku's hair up into a sprawl.
"Tidus," Wakka hisses. "What are you doing?"
Ignoring him, Tidus looks up at Riku's face. "Riku? Why are you dressed like that? What's with the blindfold? Where have you been?"
Riku's mouth parts slightly. It's… been a long time since he spoke to someone… normal. Anyone who wasn't DiZ or Namine, really. And both of them are embroiled nearly as deep in this mess as he is. What should he say?
I was in a dark castle. It was very, very far from here. I went lots of places and did things I don't want to talk about. I'm trying to fix it, but I have to drag some innocent people to their deaths to do it. No, I'm trying not to think about it either.
…Maybe he shouldn't say anything at all. He could just open a corridor, world order be damned. Or he could run. He's fast enough, certainly. He could be gone into the treeline before any of them knew what happened.
"Did you come home?" Tidus asks.
Come home? The question echoes in Riku's mind, overwriting his previous thoughts. He ruminates for a moment. He hadn't, had he? He doesn't belong here at all. Riku has changed far too much. Even if the hole of his absence did remain, he would not fit its shape anymore. That person is gone. The person Tidus thinks he's speaking to is gone.
"No," he says to Tidus. His voice is quiet and rough with disuse. "Just… visiting."
A little more courageous now that nothing bad had happened to Tidus, Selphie and Wakka approach as well. After a pause in which she seems to gather herself, Selphie speaks.
"Are you a ghost?" she asks, the words coming out all in a rush. "Is your spirit trapped here? Do we have to help you move on?"
Riku blinks, dumbfounded, though the motion could not be seen by them. Right, Selphie was always a little more caught up in the… magical side of things than most. Then again, with the things Riku's seen, maybe he shouldn't be so quick to judge.
"Well??" she prompts.
"No," Riku all but whispers. "I'm not trapped here."
Not anymore.
"Riku?" now Wakka speaks. "It's you though, isn't it? Does your family know?"
It is with these words that Riku realizes the longer he stays here, the more likely it is people will believe whatever fantastical tale the trio are bound to spin their encounter into. He's already made his choice regarding his family. He won't give them false hope.
Twisting a hand behind his back, Riku flicks his wrist. A deep hole of darkness yawns open behind him, triggering sharp gasps among his observers.
"Don't look for me," he tells them. The turbulence from the corridor whips at his coat, greedy tendrils gathering around his boots."I was never here."
Riku steps backwards. The corridor shuts.
He lets out a deep sigh, releasing a tension he hadn't realized he was holding. Darkness curls and undulates around him, welcoming him into its fold. Riku starts walking, feeling out his way towards the play island.
He still has a job to do, after all. He must awaken him — Sora. No matter what it takes. Let them tell the neighbor kids their ghost story.
It's not entirely wrong.